To be on walk-in properties I must be hunting something. You can’t just work dogs on walk-in so I went prairie chicken hunting or maybe I was turkey hunting. Kansas allows you to use your dogs in fall turkey hunting. Anything to get a bird hunt to find where the quail are.
Luke on a quail.
On a cool morning I drove to the Atchison Kansas area. In that area there are a lot of walk-in properties. There is a lot of corn and soy beans grown here and a lot of it had not been harvested, yet. The first property that I wanted to hunt was in unharvested soy beans. In the fall when the soy beans are ready to be harvested it seems as if the soy beans just jump off the plant when we get close. I won’t run my dogs in unharvested beans.
Unharvested corn is just as bad. In it you lose your dog. Even with a GPS collar on they are hard to find in standing corn. And no farmer wants to see you walking through his corn.
Luke on another quail.
It seemed like the surrounding farms were mostly harvested but the walk-in properties weren’t. I drove by several that I have hunted in the past but I couldn’t let the dogs out. Part of getting out early is to see if the farmer has taken his property out of the walk-in program or sometimes they attack the property with a bulldozer and the quail cover is gone. I didn’t notice that the program had lost anything and most of the cover was still there. It’s hard to know what it looks like over the hills but usually they push the cover off the edges first.
I had only Luke and Dolly with me. Tur Bo has a knee cap problem, Sally is in heat and Lucky is too old. Betsy could have come but I didn’t bring her.
Luke
Finally, I saw a corner of one walk-in place that the corn was harvested and soy beans weren’t but I could keep the dogs away from them. There was also a hay meadow along side the soy beans. I have found quail here on past bird hunts. I turned both dogs out with Garmin GPS and Garmin e-collars.
Dolly was eleven years old in February so she doesn’t run as far and fast as she used to but she never quits hunting until I call her. Luke is a different story. If I keep him within a quarter mile I feel like he’s underfoot. This day was no exception. We were walking north and the wind was out of the south east pretty strong. Luke made it to a cross fence and went east down the fence line. When I figured he was at the road I called him back.
We went on west along the fence row to the end of the property. There was just a scattering of trees down a draw to a pond. Both dogs followed the draw back to the south edge. Dolly came back but Luke crossed the fence and the road and followed a draw on to the south. I tried to call him back but he went on point over 600 yards south of me.
Dolly and I weren’t far from the truck so I loaded her up and drove closer to where he was on point. I waited for a while hoping the birds wouldn’t hold. Several minutes later he was still on point. I drove up to a house on that side of the road to see if they would let me go get him. I should have gotten the man’s name but I didn’t. He let me drive back close to where Luke was.
Most of his soy beans had been harvested so I drove into his field. I was about 150 yards from Luke when I got out of the truck. The GPS showed him moving. I called him and he started toward me then went on point about 90 yards away. He was along the side of a thick draw that ran through the soy bean field. I had a tough time getting across the draw but when I crossed Luke was just about 15 yards south of me. I took some pictures with my phone then walked in front of him. Nothing happened. I tapped his head.
Tur Bo pointing a covey of quail.
He went about 20 yards to the south and went back on point. This time after I took pictures 2 quail flushed when I walked in front of him. I called him and fought my way back across the draw. When I got to the other side I checked the GPS and he was on point across the draw. I fought my way back across. He was buried in the cover of the draw where I could just barely see him. When I got close another quail flushed.
This time I stayed on that side of the draw. I called Luke and he started toward me but went on point. This time he was on the out side of the draw and I took more pictures. When I went in front two quail flushed but they were down in the draw. I’m not sure I would have had a single shot on these birds. The good thing about that, no one will kill very many and they will be there as long as the food, water and cover is there.
I didn’t have a leash with me because I didn’t wear a hunting vest. I thought I was going to call Luke back to me but once he got into birds that’s all he thought about. I took his collar off, looped it through his GPS collar and led him back to the truck.
I drove by some other properties but didn’t turn dogs out. The temperature was already into the 60’s. It was good day to be on a bird hunt although I didn’t find out much about the walk-in properties. But there are some quail in that area.
Dolly on point.
Luke pointing quail.
Sally pointing a single.